We, the medical students of White Coats for Black Lives, mourn the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, grieve with their loved ones, and stand in solidarity with the Black community and their allies in Baton Rouge and St. Paul as they protest the continued violence against Black people by police. We also mourn with the families of the officers shot and killed in Dallas in their time of loss. All of these situations are examples of unjust deaths, and even as we protest the use of excessive force and police brutality, we remain committed to justice above all.
In this time, we find it necessary to reflect on the root cause of the violence we see in the headlines daily: institutionalized racism. Police brutality is a manifestation of the blatant disregard for Black – and brown – lives in this country. The murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and many, many other Black people – of all gender identities and sexual orientations – remind us that Black people’s lives are always in danger. We feel strongly that honoring those who have been killed does not mean merely remembering them, but actively committing to abolish the systems that killed them – systems that were not built by mistake. While we continue to push back against police violence, we know there are many ways Black lives, and Black well-being more broadly, are being taken in this country. Police-involved shootings are just one of the more immediate and visible ways. However, we cannot forget that this fear-inducing mechanism of maintaining control is only part of a larger system of racism and anti-blackness, which form the foundation of our country.
There has been a recent push to name police violence as a public health issue, but as medical students and professionals, we must also make sure we are committing to a broader definition of health. Many Black activists have utilized the WHO 1948 definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” While the current movement is called Black Lives Matter, we must make it clear that we are not just merely fighting for Black people’s right to live. That is not good enough. We are fighting for Black people’s full right to health. It is not just police violence, but racism that is a public health issue. The Black Panther Party made this clear almost 50 years ago when they not only named racism as a direct threat to Black health, but charged the US government with creating the systems of oppression that resulted in the poor health of Black people. [1]
As medical students, we recognize that the mechanisms that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are the same mechanisms that are harming and killing people of color in our hospitals. As an organization predominantly comprised of people of color, we cannot accept condolences from racist institutions that not only built themselves on Black and brown bodies, but continue to do nothing about the racism that still runs rampant. To those who want to act in solidarity: Not doing anything is not, and has never been, an option. Racist systems do not perpetuate themselves. If these institutions, and the individuals who comprise them, do nothing, they are responsible. [2]
We must act. Racism – not merely personal or implicit bias – is built into our society and our institutions through laws and policies that provide specific advantages for white people while disadvantaging all people of color. In order to support Black lives and well-being, we must join in the struggle to eradicate racism itself. For medical students and professionals, this requires us to look internally at the institutionalized racism in our own profession and the other institutions in our society that threaten the well-being of Black people – from housing to education to mass incarceration. Additionally, we must partner with members of our community and our colleagues in other health professions to push for institutional change at large and to support organizers and activists who are on the ground and engaging in this work.
This work is not easy, but it is necessary and important. We must affirm that the lives and health of Black and brown people matter to us, that we see the racism they experience, and that we will use our white coats to advocate for a society free of white supremacy and racism. Only then will Black lives truly matter.
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[1] In 1972, the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Program was revised to call for free healthcare: “We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival…” (Resource: https://web.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/history.shtml)
[2] In 1892, Ida B. Wells addressed all bystanders who knew lynching was wrong but did not act: “The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain silent on the perpetuation of such outrages, are particeps criminis, accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with the actual law-breakers who would not persist if they did not know that neither the law nor militia would be employed against them” (Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, Chapter V).
